Italy Re-Bans Polymarket — Putting a $22M Lazio FC Sponsorship Deal Under Italian Criminal Law
Italy's Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM) added Polymarket to its blacklist of blocked websites for the second time in July 2026, re-classifying it as an unlicensed gambling operator. Polymarket had won a court reversal before the TAR Lazio administrative court in late 2025. The renewed block threatens Polymarket's $22 million sponsorship deal with Lazio FC: Italian law prohibits clubs from advertising unlicensed betting operations, potentially forcing Lazio to drop the partnership.
Italy's Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM) added Polymarket to its official list of blocked websites for the second time in July 2026, once again classifying the prediction market as an unlicensed gambling operator. The block requires Italian internet service providers to prevent residents from accessing Polymarket.com. Polymarket was first blocked by Italy in late 2025 on the same grounds, but secured a reversal before the TAR Lazio — the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio — in proceedings that allowed the site to resume Italian access in December 2025. The ADM has now re-listed the domain, effectively restarting the blocking dispute despite the earlier court outcome.
The renewed ban has immediate implications beyond platform access. Polymarket holds a $22 million sponsorship deal with S.S. Lazio, the Serie A football club based in Rome. The sponsorship gives Polymarket prominent branding at the Stadio Olimpico and across Lazio's matchday and digital assets. Under Italian law, a club cannot lawfully advertise or endorse an entity that Italian authorities classify as an unlicensed betting operation — the prohibition is enforced under the penal code, not just regulatory guidance. If the ADM's re-listing stands, Lazio faces legal exposure for continuing to display Polymarket branding, and the club may be compelled to either renegotiate the deal or terminate it outright. Polymarket has not publicly commented on the status of the Lazio partnership following the re-blocking.
The episode illustrates how prediction markets sit in a genuinely different legal position across jurisdictions depending entirely on how a regulator classifies them. Polymarket maintains that its products are financial instruments, not gambling — the same argument it uses in its US litigation. In the United States, that argument is heard in federal court with the CFTC as advocate. In Italy, the ADM has no equivalent of the CFTC's preemption doctrine, and the classification decision belongs to the gambling regulator, which has now made it twice. The TAR Lazio ruling from late 2025 did not definitively resolve the classification question; it temporarily suspended the block, and the ADM re-exercised its authority on what appear to be the same underlying grounds.
The Italian ban lands on the same day Gibraltar announced the world's first dedicated prediction markets regulatory framework — a deliberate separate licensing category that explicitly distinguishes prediction markets from gambling. The contrast is sharp: one jurisdiction in Europe is building the legal infrastructure to license and regulate prediction markets as a distinct product, while another is re-blocking the sector's most prominent international platform for the second time in six months. For Polymarket, the more urgent question is whether the Lazio deal survives. For the industry, the Italian episode is a preview of what happens when prediction markets try to operate under a legal theory of 'not gambling' in a jurisdiction whose regulator has already decided they are.
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Recent updates
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